Towards Fiscal Democracy

Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) Statement on 2015 Budget Deliberations

The Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) appeals to the 16th House of Representatives to push for crucial budget reforms in the last two years of the Aquino administration. Doing so will bring us closer to fiscal democracy and add credence to the administration’s maxim of “Tuwid na Daan”. Congress must assert its “power of the purse”, produce regular and transparent budgetary allocations, and work toward ending discretionary measures in the budget.

Debt as Modern Slavery (Part 1 of 3)

Part I – Currency Wars, Chimerican Crisis, and the Debt-based Monetary System

By James Matthew B. Miraflor

Presented to the Southeast Asia Regional Socialism Conference of Partido Lakas ng Masa, together with Transform Asia Gender and Labor Institute, November 27, 2010, College of Social Work and Development (CSWCD), University of the Philippines Diliman

Revised on November 29 and 30, 2010

Warm revolutionary greetings to all of our comrades here. I was tasked to discuss on the debt and the financial crisis. As we know, this is a very difficult topic to talk about, as it is related to the most complicated inventions in human history – banking, monetary system, fiscal policy, and investment practices, among others. No one can pretend that the whole thing is already understood completely, for even its inventors have often been labeled as not knowing what they are doing.

Thus, to make things simpler, it is good to begin with a discussion of the current updates in the global financial and monetary practice. Right now, the United States is conducting what it calls as “quantitative easing” (QE). Simply put, this is simply printing dollars out of nowhere. The Federal Reserve already printed $600 billion to buy securities from the US Treasury. The printing press has now become, to paraphrase Ben Bernanke, the secret weapon of the American economy. This devalues dollar vis-à-vis other currencies, making exports to the US more expensive and favoring domestic producers’ access to US market.

Seen as a form of subtle protectionism and as “revenge” over China’s supposedly “undervalued” currency, it had the effect of depreciating the value of dollar worldwide. For export-oriented economies of the world, this may spell ruination, as it means that American exports will be relatively cheaper. This may have the effect of import-substitution in the United States as cheaper American goods replace goods exported by the manufacturing giants like China and Germany to the US market. In the Philippines, this had the effect of shrinking the relative value of the dollars migrant workers send back home, and compromising Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies which earn in dollars.

During the conference. University of the Philippines Diliman - CSWCD.

But beyond QE’s immediate effects lie a more structural cause. It is this cause, which will later be called as debt-based monetary system, that I will attempt to discuss in this paper. Knowing what the systemic impulse behind the production of money is brings us closer to a good explanation on the current phase of the finance capitalist system the whole world is now in. It also allows us to understand alternatives which we may have to implement as a global community if we are to avert financial disaster and transition to socialist alternatives. 

Migrants, Remittance-dependence, and the Philippine Economy

As our contribution for the Philippine process of the Peoples’ Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights to prepare for the 2nd Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) which was hosted by the Philippines on October 27–30, I was tasked to present for the Freedom from Debt Coalition on the effects of migrants remittances on the Philippine economy.

What I did was to look on important macroeconomic indicators, specifically employment, fiscal indicators, and monetary indicators (many of which were made available by the Philippine government for the public on the NSCB website). This was my presentation:

FDC presentation for Migrants

View more OpenOffice presentations from jmmiraflor.

Fiscal Dictatorship

The Scarcity of Fiscal Democracy in Post-EDSA Philippines

By James Matthew Miraflor

Researcher, Debt and Public Finance Campaign

Freedom from Debt Coalition

End Arroyo's Fiscal Dictatorship - FDC

The Post-EDSA regimes are usually contrasted with the undemocratic rule of late strongman Ferdinand Marcos. An important testament to this claim of post-EDSA democracy is the so-called “power of the purse” – the power to allocate national resources – granted to the legitimate proxies of the people, the elected members of House of Representatives. This is supposed to be a marked divergence from the Marcosian authoritarian power over the budget, a power that was eventually wielded for crony-patronage and dreams of grandeur.

Group wants debt moratorium, 6% GNP education spending

06/02/2008 | 10:56 AM

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/98619/Group-wants-debt-moratorium-6-GNP-education-spending

MANILA, Philippines - With one week to go before classes start, militant anti-debt youths demanded that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo follow the United Nations' benchmark to spend six percent of gross national product on education.



The Youth Against Debt (YAD) also reiterated the call for a moratorium on paying "illegitimate" debts, instead of having President Arroyo calling for a freeze in tuition hikes.

In the Shadow of Debt

by Walden Bello




By Walden Bello*

*President of Freedom from Debt Coalition, senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. The author would like to thank James Matthew Miraflor and Bobby Diciembre of the Freedom from Debt Coalition for their assistance.

Assaulted on all sides owing to its entanglement in the ZTE-NBN corruption scandal, the administration has confronted its critics with the image of an economy that is purring along, that is doing just fine except for the rise in the price of rice, for which it says it is blameless.

Deconstructing "Growth" in 2007

But the state of the economy, even some of the administration's friends have pointed out, is a thin reed on which to rest. In a recent article, Peter Wallace, an influential consultant, deconstructed the 7.3 per cent growth rate recorded for the Philippines in 2007, showing that the figure is actually a statistical fluke that stems from the way the measure Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is computed. The figure actually masks something negative: the fall of imports by 5.4 per cent. "So because we had less imports, GDP looked good," Wallace says. "From where I sit, that does not indicate a strong, growing economy, the best in 31 years."i With no less irony, the World Bank agrees: "Remarkably, weaker import growth made the largest arithmetical contribution to the growth acceleration in 2000-07 compared to 1990-99." It added that this was not "consistent with sustained fast growth in the longer term."ii

ZTEwwww!

A Primer on the Anomalous National Broadband Network Project and other Disgusting Illegitimate Deals and Debts of the Philippines

by the Freedom from Debt Coalition

What is the ZTE NBN deal?


It is a $ 329 million loan from the China Export and Import Bank to finance the infrastructure project between the Philippine Government and the China-based Zhong XingTelecommunication Equipment Company Limited (ZTE). The said project aims to develop a telecommunications infrastructure that will deliver voice, data, and internet services to all government offices and municipalities nationwide.